Levelland Puts Guns Into Schools And That’s No Reason To Cheer

Levelland will now allow certain teachers with concealed carry licensing to carry guns on campus. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, but the chances that it will result in anything other than gun sales is kind of ridiculous. More after the jump.

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Yesterday a police detective that what questioning a suspect IN A POLICE STATION was shot. President Reagan was shot while surrounded by armed, highly trained secret service men. I could put a hundred stories up here, but the point is clear; the chances of a school teacher turning into Rambo and taking out a school shooter are practically none.

Have you ever seen the police and SWAT teams show up at an active shooting site? Have you seen them run in an engage the shooter? No, that's not what they do, so why would a teacher be any different? So basically what 'guns in schools' advocates are hoping for is a situation where an active shooter pauses for a second while Old Miss Whitehead pulls a gun out of her desk, takes the gun-lock off and shoots the villain. It's kind of the same thing with an armed guard or two at the entrance of schools, an active shooter can just go to the other side. It took the Newtown shooter 5 minutes to do his evil and ALMOST ALL shooters are actually expecting to either kill themselves or commit suicide by cop. Chances are WAY more likely that the teacher will not be in the area the active shooter is, the teacher will freeze up, the shooter will shoot the teacher first, the teacher won't act in fear of endangering students, the teacher will shoot someone who was trying to help, the teacher will miss, or worst of all, the gun will be stolen or taken from the teacher and used by the shooter or someone who would not have had access to a firearm otherwise. Now, if say the teacher was ex-military or ex-police, I'd be ALL FOR IT, but that doesn't appear to be the case here.

Guess what? I don't have an answer. Doors that lock from the outside, but that can be pushed open from the inside seem to be good. Having guests have to "buzz" in seems good. Still, none of these are probably 100% effective. All I can say is for gun rights folks to claim some sort of victory by putting guns on campus is amazingly naive. All that has really been done is that they've guaranteed that there are now dangerous weapons on school grounds. The best I can tell there are about 100,000 campuses in the U.S. and we've had just a few (granted even a few is too many) shootings. The likelihood that this is going to result in anything other than gun sales could be measured on the head of a pin. Guns on school campuses, or even not on school campuses does nothing but further one side or the others political agenda. I think we have to look a letter deeper and more critically at potential solutions.

For those of you who couldn't handle the big words or missed the point, here's a cartoon from Taiwan.